How to Bring Café Vibes to Your Home

One of the many things I've been longing for since the pandemic has flipped the world on it's head is the chill café vibe that I love for study sessions, writing, people watching, sketching, and just enjoying a cup of coffee while getting creative. Just imagine a girl with glasses perched over a laptop in a messy sweater typing furiously or scribbling in a notebook while sipping a steaming latte with ambient music playing in the background and the chatter or customers and steam of the coffee machine providing the soundtrack. While definitely a trope, this image has always appealed to me and I always sort of settled into productive writer/student/creator mode whenever I entered a café and sat down with my drink of choice, opened my laptop, pulled out my calendar, and got to work. At the end of my study or work session, I enjoyed swapping my notebooks for sketchbooks and doodling the people nearby or a passerby in the street.

Since it's still uncertain as to when it will be safe to sit indoors in a coffee shop, I decided to try to recreate a similar experience at home. If you also long to bring some of the café essence into your home, hopefully these tips will be helpful.

For the space itself, we have a little art/sun room in our house where most of our lovely houseplants reside. There's a few pieces of art on the walls and a fun, multicolored tablecloth with a plant as the centerpiece. If later in the evening, I like lighting a candle or two for the extra light and nice scent.

To add to the ambiance, make or find a playlist with whatever music you enjoy. I fluctuate between loving ambient, instrumental and classical music to an indie pop-rock-hits playlist most days. Other times I'm craving Celtic music or some French pops...it's really anyone's guess as to what will appear if I put Spotify on shuffle.

Next comes the food and drinks. If in the morning, I enjoy dark roast coffee (normally decaf because I cannot handle a lot of caffeine) with a dash of soy milk. I also love chai lattes and find that Trader Joe's or Oregon Chai's spiced chai concentrates are delicious and dairy free! Simply mix the concentrate with your choice of (dairy free) milk, heat or serve cold or over ice for an iced chai. If in the afternoon, I've been enjoying tea or some of my homemade kombucha (check out the previous post for more information on this journey). In the winter, hot chocolate is another great hot drink (or really any time of the year). Personally, I'm not a huge fan of pumpkin-spiced drinks but I do love the seasonal peppermint mocha which you can recreate at home using peppermint extract or crushed peppermint and a hot chocolate-coffee mix.

For food, in the mornings a pastry or some sort of sweet-treat is a great pairing with a nice cup of Joe. Croissants and turnovers can be sometimes be tricky or time consuming to make at home, but scones and muffins are really easy to bake. Coffee cake or sweet breads like chocolate banana bread with peanut butter are also delicious. I recently made sourdough blueberry muffins and had them with blueberry jam and almond butter (would highly recommend).

For a more balanced breakfast, tofu or egg scrambles with vegetables over toast and a side of fruit make a healthy meal. Oatmeal with fruit and nuts or a smoothie bowl like the one below (açaí with banana and homemade granola) are also great options for a balance of carbs, protein, fats, and nutrients. Plus it tastes really good.

Another option if you want to support your local cafes and bakeries is to order food and drinks to go and bring them back home to do work. Transfer the drinks and food from the to-go-containers to nice mugs and plates to get a more 'authentic' café vibe. If you have a window that overlooks the street, try to set up something near there for some potential people watching if that's something you enjoy. Theres also various podcasts and music tracks that have recordings of real-life café conversations if you want to try to recreate the sounds within your house.

Hopefully we'll all be able to safely enjoy in person interactions soon, but until then please stay safe and be conscious of your actions and how they affect others. Staying home and getting things to go lowers the risks of your chances of infection as well as everyone you interact with. There are many great ways to support local business like buying gift cards or continuing to buy items from the store online. I hope you all stay safe, stay well, and find ways to bring joy and comfort into your life in small, sometimes unexpected ways.